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Ned Colletti will remain with the Dodgers as a senior advisor to Stan Kasten. (Keith Birmingham/Staff photographer)

The Dodgers hired longtime Tampa Bay Rays general manager Andrew Friedman as their new president of baseball operations Tuesday, while retaining former general manager Ned Colletti as a Senior Advisor to Stan Kasten.

Friedman, 37, is expected to hold a press conference at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday. He had been the Rays’ general manager since 2005 and built four playoff teams since 2008 with a payroll that ranked no higher than 27th in baseball.

“Andrew Friedman is one of the youngest and brightest minds in the game today and we are very fortunate to have him join our organization,” Kasten said in a statement released by the team. “The success he has had over the past nine years in molding the Tampa Bay Rays team has been incredible.”

The front-office shakeup leaves the Dodgers without a general manager for the moment, which is likely to change soon. Kasten’s title could also change. He had been the Dodgers’ President and CEO since joining the front office in 2012.

“Ned Colletti has played a major role in the success of the Los Angeles Dodgers over the last nine years and I’m thrilled that we are able to retain him as a special advisor to me,” Kasten said in a statement. “Ned’s knowledge and experience in the game covering 33 years will be a great asset to the club as we continue to add and build our player development system.”

The Dodgers will finalize their 2015 coaching staff in the coming days and weeks. (Getty Images)

Dodgers manager Don Mattingly addressed a number of topics in his season-ending media session Thursday. The big takeaway, as I explained in today’s editions: If the Dodgers didn’t beat themselves, and the manager only would’ve done one thing differently, then whoever assembled the team is primarily accountable for an early playoff exit.

That’s the manager’s opinion, and Don Mattingly doesn’t have the power to fire Ned Colletti.

Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti said there is a “small market” for trades to be made in the coming days. (Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO >> Despite rumors swirling around outfielder Matt Kemp, and the recent struggles of several veteran pitchers, Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti said Saturday that “we may not do anything” between now and the non-waiver trade deadline of 1 p.m. Thursday.

“We have a club that’s solid, still has a lot of upside. Have we won four games in a row yet?”

Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti has grown his analytics department from 1 to 4 since taking the job in 2006. (Getty Images)

We don’t know how large the Dodgers’ analytics department was in Paul DePodesta’s final days as general manager. It was almost certainly larger than 1, the number of people exclusively assigned to the task when Ned Colletti took over in 2006. And that one person, Colletti said, left two months into his tenure.

I briefly touched on this subject in today’s story about the Dodgers’ changing philosophy for the amateur draft, and what it might mean for their winter free-agent pursuits. The Dodgers have a four-person analytics team now, headed by Director of Contracts, Baseball Research and Operations Alex Tamin. Doing research for the story, I asked Colletti how the department grew from one to four:

We started an internship program. It just so happened that we brought interns in with a very strong analytical background. We just continued that process. … Analytics became a more valuable resource to your decision making. We had interns that had that type of approach, and we recognized the increased value of a more well-rounded approach to the acquisition process. As the interns graduated from college, we started to hire them as full-time employees.

I seek as much information as I can. If you evaluate only through scouting and what people see, you’re not fully utilizing what’s available to you. If you just use analytics, you’re not using what’s readily available to you. Just using analytics would be the same as hiring an executive with a high salary on (only reading) a resume. You need both at a strong caliber of evaluation to give yourself a better-percentage chance.

I think there’s great value in both. I don’t think you can do the process fairly without using both.

This is a topic I’ve touched on before, but as the amount of baseball data continues to explode, it’s worth revisiting periodically to see how the Dodgers keep up with the data explosion. Colletti said he recently had one scout, and one person from his analytics team, advising him simultaneously while making a decision on a player acquisition. Similar scenes will probably play out in the coming weeks and months.

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